To Dance With Death
by ofoldvalyria
Summary: Death had snatched away everything she loved. Her family, her dreams, her bravery, her aspirations, her hope. It ripped everything she had once been from her chest to leave her with nothing but an empty hole in her. It had left her as nothing more than an empty shell of a girl who could have been great...


**A/N: **Hello everybody, thank you for taking the time to look at - and hopefully read - my story! This is the first fanfiction I've posted to this account so I'm really nervous, I just hope you all enjoy it. It will be a dark story and the rating may eventually go up. As a warning there will be violence, death, mentions of torture, mentions of miscarriage, angst and a lot of drama in this story. However, for now I hope you enjoy and please review!

**Disclaimer: **Unfortunately I do not have the brilliant mind of J.K and so do not own Harry Potter in any way shape or form, nor do I claim to!

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_**Prologue: Nothing Ever Lasts Forever**_

If there was one thing Dorcas had ever learned in life it was most definitely that nothing ever lasted forever. Everything had a beginning and everything had an end, just how soon that end would come however was less certain – yet it was always there, looming over every part of someone's life, ready to snatch them away once their precious seconds had finally run out.

For some death came sudden, stealing into their lives like a thief in the night, shrouded in shadows, waiting for the perfect moment before pouncing and snatching them away as easy and as quick as switching off a light. For others however death was much slower, torturing them endlessly over weeks, months, _years_, suspending them in a seemingly permanent state of pain. Hanging them in the state between life and death, making them silently beg for the end to their sickness, to the distress and pain and sadness, as death closed its ice-cold grip around their neck, squeezing the life out of them bit by bit, drowning them further and further until the grip closed too far and at last they were allowed the peace they had come to crave.

It was this that made Dorcas utterly terrified of death.

It was this that made every single breath Dorcas took – every word she spoke, every movement she made, every moment she experienced – strike fear into her heart. For every single one of these was just another step towards the inevitable end, wasn't it? Despite how much she tried to ignore it she knew it was only a matter of time until her flame flickered out, losing its struggle with the darkness that pressed around it, and it was this that made her ever more desperate to cling onto the flame for as long as she could. She tried to protect it as best as she could, cupped her hands around the flickering flame of her life to protect it whilst also trying to remain ignorant to how it would never burn as bright as it could like this. It never really worked, the truth had the nasty habit of seeping through her defences.

Death was a constant presence in Dorcas' life, it always had been. Her first encounter had been when she was three and her mother had told her, as she comforted her crying daughter, words that Dorcas would never forget. She had told her that death was not final, not if life was lived first and to its fullest. Dorcas now realised that it was nothing more than another lie that parents told their children to keep them naïve and protected from the dark workings of the world. Like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, both lovely stories to excite children but they were precisely that, stories and nothing more.

It had been her pet rabbit, Flopsy, which had died first. Then it was her grandfather, her aunt, both her grandmother's, the boy who lived in the Muggle village down from the manor and used to pick flowers for her, her other grandfather, one of the House-Elves. And as she grew older her mother had kept repeating the same mantra to her, ever the optimist, until eventually even she could no longer bring herself to say the words. That had been when her baby sister had died, although Dorcas supposed she had never really lived to begin with, it had been a miscarriage. It had been a brother next, dead in the same way, dead before his life had even begun. Finally, even her mother had left her.

She must have been to more funerals than anybody else, graveyards were almost a second home to her.

Death had snatched away everything she loved. Her family, her dreams, her bravery, her aspirations, her _hope_. It ripped everything she had once been from her chest to leave her with nothing but an empty hole in her.

It had left her as nothing more than an empty shell of a girl who could have been great. It had made her guarded and distrustful of love and friendship – so scared of more loss that she refused to form bonds with others in spite of the crippling loneliness that bitterly embraced her petite form. It had made her construct so many walls around her broken and shattered heart that even she could no longer find her way into that impenetrable fortress. Her heart was as much a mystery to herself as it was to anyone. She was Pandora, she mused, and her heart was her box, something she dare not open for fear of what would come rushing out.

It was easier that way, or so she told herself. The less she loved the less she could be hurt, now that was a lesson that she would have preferred to have been taught as a child. It would have after all saved her so much heartache, it might have even saved her. But then again Dorcas wasn't even sure she could be saved any more.

Did she even want to be saved?

She didn't see the point in rising once more, only to be ripped down mercilessly as life – or more precisely death – had the cruel tendency to do so. She didn't believe in quick fixes, she had long since given up on the hope of ever being truly happy, such things existed only in fairytales and the imagination of fools.

And Dorcas Meadowes may have been many things but she was not a fool.

After all the pain and loss she had suffered she no longer held a rose tinted view of the world and sometimes she wondered if life would be easier if she did? How much would change if she believed in silly fantasies and happily ever afters? How different would she be?

It seemed easier, to live a life where light could _always _be found in the darkness and good would always triumph over evil. Dorcas envied those who could live so blissfully unaware of the constant darkness festering away somewhere in the world, she would have given anything to trade places with them, to forget all of her worries and fears and just allow herself to _be_. _  
_

She couldn't though, not any more at least.

Life was not rose coloured, there was no light and there was no dark, there was just an eternal abyss of grey. Everybody, no matter how much of a different perspective they had on the matter, was just fumbling through the never ending convulsing matter of grey until finally they faded and died and went to nothingness. Dorcas didn't believe in God or in Heaven, what sort of God would ever _ever_ put somebody through such pain?

She believed only in life and in death. She believed that life was just to dance with death, to constantly spin, swirl and pirouette gracefully around it. Never missing a step, never getting tired of the dance, for when you did then death could take you. It happened to everyone in the end. There were some who danced dangerously close, living on the recklessness that every step they took in the dance was always too close to failing. No, Dorcas preferred to dance safely.

Too safely some would say.

Still it was better to be safe then sorry. Safe and scared.

For that was who Dorcas was; she was just a lonely, tired, scared and broken little girl.

_It was better than being dead after all._

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**A/N: **I just wanted to say that as I was writing this it became a lot more dark then I originally intended - sorry! This is just my interpretation of Dorcas Meadowes, I have no ideas of making her a Mary Sue, and her character will grow and develop over the story. I would like to say now that this won't be a love triangle between Dorcas, Remus and Sirius; there will be parts of both relationships but ultimately in the end she will be with one of them. Which one out of the two however is of at the moment unknown to me, I was hoping I'd have some reader input as the story progressed! Thank you for taking the time to read, it would mean the world to me if you could review or favourite or follow or a mixture of all three. Merci c:


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